


Some Scars Are More Than Skin Deep

by FireflySong



Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [16]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Night Terrors, living through the shit these dorks did would mess anyone up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24807007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflySong/pseuds/FireflySong
Summary: It has been months since the events up on Blackwood Mountain, and while the physical scars may have healed, the mental ones are a another story entirely.Written for Day 16: Tears of the Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge over on tumblr.
Relationships: Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley
Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770988
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Some Scars Are More Than Skin Deep

**Author's Note:**

> heya. so. going back to the basics here, or at least the first thing i ever posted in this fandom: hurt/comfort. just know that if you thought my entry for pet was bad with chrashley, then this is like abysmal. so so easy write though. enjoy.
> 
> you can find me on tumblr at love-fireflysong if you feel so inclined!

Months after the fact, things slowly started to get better. The burns and cuts on Ashley’s wrists healed and now only the faintest of scars remained, though she couldn’t stand to have anything on or around them anymore. The black eye and bruise on her forehead had swollen to a terrifying degree, but that too lessened in time to return to unmarked pale skin. Chris’s own bruises and cuts healed, with the burn mark from the gun almost fading away completely. He still walked with a limp, his ankle had jammed horribly from landing on it wrong when running away from the Wendigo ( _Hannah_ , Ash’s brain likes to unhelpfully remind her). Walking on it and then running had not helped matters any. But even that too will eventually fade over time, Chris reassures her, with only an occasional limp during extremely cold weather. Or from too much physical exertion and exercising. He laughs when he tells her this, and she can’t help but laugh with him, glad that this little bit of normal is still theirs.

Those are only the physical injuries though, the mental ones take much, much longer to fade, and Ash doubts they ever will.

The two of them share a bed now, switching who stays over at who’s place every couple of nights. It’s nothing sexual, they’ve still yet to do anything of that nature, it’s just that they’ve both discovered that they sleep better with the other there, knowing that they are both in arms reach. The nightmares and terrors are easier to deal with.

Though not a whole lot more, as Ash is being reminded (again) tonight.

They’ve been happening less and less thankfully, but each one is still as bad as the last. She doesn’t like to think about what happens in them, because so many things happen. In one second she’s at 'The Table', chained and immobile as Chris aims a gun at his head. The next she’s watching a pair of clawed hands come around his head and the claws shatter the lens of his glasses. In another she’s standing inside the great room of the lodge, flames licking up her legs as the Wendigo ( _Hannah_ ) grabs her and is about to stick it’s sharp nails into her eyes ( _Chris, where’s Chris? Why isn’t he helping me?_ ), but all she can see is the dark, thick lines of the tattooed butterfly on its ( _her_ ) left shoulder. Next, she’s wandering in the mines beneath the lodge with Emily at her side, and she can’t find Chris anywhere, but she can hear him. The cries of Jess have stopped, now replaced with Chris’s voice calling out. ( _It’s not him, it’s not him. But what if it is? What if it is?_ )

Ash wakes with a scream, eyes shut tight against the horrors she’s afraid will appear amongst the darkness of her bedroom if she opens them. She’s still screaming, screaming, screaming for Chris as she flails around the bed, searching for him ( _Where is he? Where is he?! He’s dead. Dead dead dead dead!_ ) but finding nothing until she feels a pair of hands firmly cupping the sides of her face. At first, she can only scream louder, ( _It’s Hannah, it’s Hannah. I’m so so sorry Hannah!_ ) but then there’s a heavy pressure on her forehead and the sound of his voice. She’s so relieved that she doesn’t hesitate to grasp firmly onto the wrists and the screams change into heavy, deep sobs and wails.

She still doesn’t open her eyes.

She knows that the pressure is from him pressing his forehead to hers, that the hands brushing away her tears as they fall are his too, and that though she can’t understand what he’s saying, that it’s the sound of his voice that matters more then the words. It’s all done to ground her. To remind her that he’s still right here, that the nightmares aren’t real.

She still doesn’t open her eyes.

Ash can’t bear to touch anything other than his wrists to keep his hands right where they are. A part of her is scared, _terrified_ , that she will find the cavernous, bloody hole where the bullet entered into his jaw. That she won’t find any head at all to begin with, only empty air, and the comforting pressure on her forehead a phantom pain of what could have been. That the last few months of him by her side had been nothing but the happier dreams of a woman who can’t bear to admit that the love of her life, that her best friend, is dead.

She still doesn’t open her eyes. 

Slowly, so slowly it seems to be take hours, her sobs lessen and her panicked breathing regulates. She still can’t make out the words though and starts to wonder what he says to her when she’s like this. Is it common platitudes meant to soothe her? Loving reminders that he isn’t going anywhere without her? Random words and sentences that come to mind in his sleep-addled state? Terrible jokes to take her mind off of the terrible things inside of it? Unbidden, Ash begins to think of the one’s he had read to her off the stick of the popsicle they had shared earlier that day. ( _Where do dogs like to shop? The flea market. Where do you put barking dogs? In a barking lot._ ) Ash can’t help the laugh that chokes it’s way out between her sobs, coming out as more a weak hiccup then anything resembling a laugh.

She opens her eyes.

The room is not dark, the stars from the nightlight she’s kept on ever since the mountain spinning around the room, dancing across Chris’s face. His blond hair is messy from sleep and his eyes tired but oh so awake and alert at the same time. There is no bullet lodged into his jaw and the sickly glint of bone beneath it. No bloody chunks of flesh and bone stuck in his hair. No pair of ash-grey hands reaching around his head to crush it. It’s just him. Just her complete dork of a boyfriend Chris.

The kiss Ash gives him is entirely needy: sloppy and wet with tears, but so, so happy that he’s alive and with her.

If he has any complaints about it, he keeps it to himself, kissing her back just as fiercely before he settles into placing light kisses anywhere a tear falls on her face. Once the tears slowed, they settled into a desperate hug, rocking back and forth on her bed as she begins to murmur unheard words into his shoulder. Her fingers now grasping firmly into the back of his shirt to just hold him in place against her, though he doesn’t seem as any eager to move as she is. 

Sometimes—most times—she feels bad about this. But Ash knows that just like how he’s always ready to be there when she needs him, that she’ll be doing the reassuring and comforting for Chris in just a few more nights when he awakes with nightmares of his own.

They never tell each other what their nightmares involve, but she can guess his some nights. Those nights she wakes up to a cut off cry of agony, and he reaches for her, eyes wide with pain and begging that she’s alright. Without hesitation, she will wrap her hands around his face and cover it with reassuring kisses as his hands dart to her waist, frantically lifting up her shirt with sleep-addled fingers until he can place his hands on the bare skin there. He will then trace the area of her waist around to her belly and back, over and over again, until he is sure that there is no broken skin to be found there. 

From there, she will move to pull him into the same desperate, rocking embrace as he begins to sob apologies into her hair where he has buried his face into the space between where her shoulder and neck meet.

They respond so differently to each of their own night terrors. Ash can’t bear to face that they might be real, so she keeps her eyes closed. Refusing to acknowledge them helps convince her that it’s all in her head. Chris though is physical. He is tactile in his desperate need to prove to himself that nothing was real and touching her wherever he can to confirm that she’s alright.

Eventually, his sobs too will lessen, and he will instead murmur words into her hair. She won’t be able to understand them, but it won’t bother her too much. Her hair can keep his secrets until he’s ready to tell them to her. Regardless, she thinks its the same phrase she repeats into his shoulder over and over again.

_I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you._


End file.
